For a Sunday

 

China returns its third hostage:

Global Affairs Canada says Albertan Sarah McIver has been released from custody in China and returned to Canada.

McIver had been detained over a work-permit issue related to her teaching job.

Her arrest followed those of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, two Canadians living and working in China, on allegations they were harming China’s national security.

 
China does not do things for humanitarian reasons. The question is, therefore: what was promised? What will Justin's government do to free Robert Lloyd Schellenberg?


The Epoch Times has done some sterling work on exposing China and its rotten communist system (a system kept alive through toadying and trade). These articles are must-reads.

Case in point:

Huawei was involved in creating China’s “Golden Shield” internet censorship infrastructure; the incipient “social credit system” to track and rate citizens based on behavior; and video monitoring project “Heaven Net” (tian wang). Many of Huawei’s clients are Chinese state-security related.

Speaking of foreign influences:

The Rockefeller group, based in the United States, laid down five specific tracks to solve what they saw as the Canadian problem. First, they would stop the expansion of pipelines and other infrastructure. Second, they would forcibly cause reforms to the governance of “water, toxics and land.” Third, they would “significantly reduce future demand” for oilsands product. Next, they would leverage the debate to policy victories in both the U.S. and Canada. Finally, they would persuade policymakers that oil wasn’t going to be needed in the future because we’d have electric cars.

To execute this strategy, Rockefeller commenced a decade-long campaign to taint the world’s image of Canada and turn Canadians against each other. It was a brilliant success.

Rockefeller’s funders must be pleased with Trans Mountain’s expansion in limbo, the two next best pipeline prospects barely registering a pulse, and Alberta lowering its oil production on Jan. 1.

Next, the Trudeau government is preparing to pass legislation to permanently bar oil exports from leaving ports on the northwest coast of British Columbia and break up our distinguished National Energy Board after it was persistently criticized by Rockefeller’s partners in its anti-oilsands campaign.

Our oil is called “ethical” for good reason. Yet, few of Canada’s high environmental and social standards that apply to domestic production are imposed on the inward flow of imported oil. It’s another of those dissonant facts we have become accustomed to. Discriminate against ourselves? Well, if we must. Against others, like Saudi oil — we wouldn’t dare.

** 

The United Conservative Party has filed an official complaint with the election commissioner about Progress Alberta, a left-leaning registered political action committee.

At the heart of the complaint is two monetary donations Progress Alberta received from Tides, a U.S.-based foundation. The executive director of Progress Alberta says his organization has done nothing wrong.

**

“No apology if this sounds bellicose,” says UCP Leader Jason Kenney, explaining why he believes Alberta should fight back hard against anti-oil activists.

The counter-attack shouldn’t just come from government, according to Kenney. He insists that industry leaders join his battle.

If he’s elected, he says, “I will call in the CEOs of major oil companies and tell them they’ve got to get in this game.”

“I’ve got a new definition of ‘social licence.’ If they want to develop our resources, they’d darn well better start fighting for the industry. I want to see some energy companies take the fight to these (anti-oil) groups.”

(Sidebar: if the entire system has been corrupted, the presence of industry leaders isn't going to make a difference, Jason.)

**

But several people in the tech sector, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the topic, said that Ottawa has instead used the funds to support wounded industries. That instinct is very familiar for people who have followed Canada’s public spending efforts on innovation.

“Essentially all government funding in one industry or another is political,” said Aaron Wudrick, director of the Taxpayers Federation of Canada.

NO!

Surely not!:

Liberal government props up Bombardier with $372 million in loans

Hudak had an idea similar to this and people voted for Wynne all the same which led to the further bankrupting of Ontario:

Premier Brian Pallister, in his third year of a promise to eliminate the deficit by 2024, says he is not planning any large-scale layoffs, but some trimming remains to be done — largely by not filling vacant positions when someone retires or quits.

“Senior management is still heavy outside of core government, in the so-called MUSH sector (municipalities, universities, school boards and hospitals) and in the Crowns,” Pallister said in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press.

“(It’s) heavier than we would like, and so there is that aspect that has to be dealt with.”

Pallister was elected in 2016 on a promise to end a string of deficits that started under the former NDP government. He has already cut civil service jobs by eight per cent through attrition and has ordered Crown agencies to reduce management positions.

Why not just declare that if people weigh the same as a duck they are made out of wood and therefore float, that they are innocent and free to go? Don't mangle the legal system piecemeal. Do it at once and get it over with:

Legal experts say proposed changes to the Criminal Code after a high-profile acquittal in the fatal shooting of an Indigenous man are short-sighted.

Key changes in a federal bill, which has passed third reading, involve peremptory challenges during jury selection and use of preliminary inquiries. Peremptory challenges allow lawyers to remove a potential juror without giving reasons.

Calgary lawyer Balfour Der, who has worked as both a prosecutor and a defence lawyer for 38 years, said the proposed changes are a knee-jerk reaction in part to the acquittal by an all-white jury of a Saskatchewan farmer in the shooting death of a 22-year-old Cree man.

“It’s a reaction of the government to satisfy an interest group which may have been complaining after this,” he said in a recent interview.

“I can’t imagine anything less helpful in jury selection to both sides than to have no peremptory challenges. You’re not just looking for a jury of your peers but you’re looking for an impartial jury.”

Justin's usual tact of blaming Harper for everything and then comparing Scheer to Harper instead of trotting out a record of positive achievements should show what a weak, oleaginous, petty failure of an oxygen-sucking creature he is.

But if he really wants to compare himself to both Harper and Scheer, let's indulge him.

Stephen Harper and Andrew Scheer didn't do the following:

- vacation on a billionaire's private island and then be judged guilty of ethics violations
- tell a veteran and his fake leg that he and his brothers-in-arms deserved to get taken to court by the Liberal government and that they were asking for too much money
- make an @$$ of himself in front of all "peoplekind"
- embarrass Canada in India, fly away (at the taxpayer's expense) without a reasonable trade deal and then accuse the Indian government of lying
- molest a female reporter and shrug it off as "Men and women experience things differently ...” 
- screw up NAFTA
- keep open borders
- block much-needed pipelines

Yep. Harper and Scheer are certainly alike in that regard.




Speaking of scumbags:

Nathan Rambukkana and Herbert Pimlott, who teach at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., maintain their comments about Peterson were not defamatory but argue in a third-party claim that they could not have known the statements would be recorded or disseminated outside the November 2017 meeting.

The pair allege Lindsay Shepherd, then a teaching assistant, had “power and control” over the recording and the distribution of the conversation, and meant for the contents of the meeting to potentially become widely available and discussed.

Therefore, they argue, should the court find Peterson suffered damages or injuries, those would be “attributable to Shepherd and her publication and dissemination” of the recording.

How dare Lindsay Shepherd expose them for the lying bullies that they are?!


Also:

Time, that tattered, shrunken revenant of a once-popular news magazine, continues in its endless decline to delude itself that it has either the authority or the competence to name the “Person of the Year.” Brilliantly it named journalists — “The Guardians” — as 2018’s collective heroes, with Jamal Khashoggi given pride of place on the once-iconic cover. Time neglected to check on Khashoggi and now finds that it nominated a Qatar stooge, whose columns were midwifed by officers in the Qatar government, and whose “journalistic” career was but a distracting pendant to his many more serious activities, latterly as an anti-Saudi lobbyist, nephew to the one-time world’s biggest arms dealer, and a host of other shadowy mésalliances.

Oops.



Christmas was a different time back then:

The year was 1956. Mom and Dad were taking all four of us — my two older sisters and a younger brother — to our first-ever Christmas Party at Uncle Joe D’Souza’s palatial home in what was then known as Clifton. ...

Aunt Flora took me to a group of other girls and boys, and asked them to take me with them as they prepared to visit homes singing Christmas carols. Of course, I was unwelcome, not because I was a Muslim, but because none of the 12 to 15-year-olds wanted a four-year-old dressed up in shorts and a bow-tie to tag along. The D’Souza’s two sons, Henry and Leslie, received a firm one-finger warning to behave and so I went on my first and last walk in the night hanging on to Henry’s arm as all of them went door to door singing carols.

As we walked, I was in some different world. Karachi’s Catholics and the many Anglo-Indians were so near, yet so far when I recall that stroll in the night.

Fast forward to Nov. 6, 1987, the day I arrived at Montreal’s Mirabel Airport as a “landed immigrant” with two daughters and a “girlfriend” wife in tow.

As I walked out, lo and behold, I see Aunt Flora D’Souza at the gate. The same Aunt Flora, Uncle Joe D’Souza and their sons Henry and Leslie had all moved to Canada in the great escape from Islamic Pakistan that had turned into hell for Christians.

Henry who had taken me on my first Christmas would later die as would Uncle D’Souza and Aunt Flora and I wish I could meet Leslie if he gets to read this.

As my Christmas wish I hope Canada opens its door to another Catholic left behind in Pakistan — Asia Bibi who has spent nine years on death row, simply for being a Christian.

Also:

It is necessary to take stock of the plight of Pakistani Christians this year. Members of the 1.5% Christian minority in Pakistan start life at a disadvantage. They are called “Choorhas,” a pejorative term that means “washroom cleaners.” That reflects their social status. Plenty of other ethnic or cultural minorities around the world face this sort of discrimination. However, for Pakistani Christians their image is the least of their problems. Their suffering is worse than comparable minorities in other countries. Much, much worse.

The whole world now knows the case of Asia Bibi, the Christian woman only recently released after eight years on death row for allegedly insulting Islam. She was cleared but has to live in hiding with her family, following threats on her life from vengeful Islamist groups.

However, this is just one case of many, and the radar of the world’s media unfortunately has missed even more terrible outrages. Freelance columnist Meher Tarar tells the horrifying story of a Christian couple in Punjab, Shehzad and Shama Masih, who were set upon by a mob after a rumour that they had desecrated the Qur’an. They were dragged through their village behind a tractor and thrown into the furnace of the brick kiln where Shahzad worked. Shama was a mother of three, and pregnant. Their six-year-old son witnessed the murder of his parents.

It would be easy to attribute this thirst for violence against non-believers to small bands of hotheads, but the figures seem to disprove this. After Asia Bibi’s release, tens of thousands participated in the street riots baying for her death, and the rabble that immolated Shehzad and Shama comprised “thousands,” according to Tarar — so virtually the whole community. This vicious and prevalent contempt is what makes the situation for Pakistani Christians so unendurable.

 
North Koreans are not returning from China - a communist hell-hole - to North Korea - an even worse communist hell-hole - of their own volition. That point needs to be stressed:

North Koreans who defected but later changed their minds and returned to the North are giving lectures in towns and cities on the Chinese border extolling the pleasures of life under Kim Jong-un and the misery of being on the run in China and struggling to survive in a capitalist state. 

The lectures are part of the North Korean government’s efforts to halt the steady flow of its citizens over the border into China, from where they attempt to reach a third country - often Thailand - and seek asylum and the assistance of Seoul to settle in South Korea. 

The North has been increasing its deterrents on the border, adding advanced surveillance equipment, including infrared cameras, and more guard posts. Dissident media has also reported that mobile wiretapping units are operating close to the border to detect anyone calling China to potentially arrange a defection. 

The use of double-defectors, however, is designed to reinforce the regime’s message that many who flee the North regret their decision.

A year in archeological discoveries:

Archeologists found the world’s oldest shipwreck, which had previously only been seen in ancient art. The 23-foot-long vessel, believed to be Greek, was discovered at the bottom of the Black Sea and appears to be more than 2,400 years old.

Carbon-dating confirmed it is indeed the oldest known intact shipwreck. Archeologists have only ever seen the ship, thought to be a trading vessel, represented on pottery.

The ship was preserved by a lack of oxygen more than two kilometres below the surface. The ship’s rudders, mast and rowing benches are all intact, according to the Black Sea Maritime Archeology Project.

The ship was found alongside 60 other discoveries, including classical period Roman vessels and 17th century fleets, as marine archeologists studied the effects of pre-historic sea level changes on the surrounding area.

Friday Post

The final Friday of the year ...


(sigh)


Anyway ...



Two are killed by a roadside bomb in Egypt:

Egyptian security officials say a roadside bomb has hit a tourist bus in an area near the Giza Pyramids, killing at least two people and wounding 10 others.

The officials said the bus was traveling Friday in the Marioutiyah area near the pyramids when the roadside bomb went off.

If Canada point-blank refuses to turn back illegal migrants, why would it stop this?:

The federal government is pledging a review of border laws and their effect on Indigenous rights. 

One Liberal MP involved is calling the U.S./Canada border an "onerous imposition" and "undue burden" on Indigenous nations whose territory extends into both Canada and the U.S.

Marc Miller, parliamentary secretary for Crown-Indigenous Relations, says he believes the border has had the effect of "impeding on cultural and traditional activities, which include hunting, cultural exchanges and simple mobility." 

He says the government is open to considering changes.

During the War of 1812, aboriginal warriors forced back invading American forces and sent them to their territory.

How things have changed.



It's definitely an election year:

Flush with party fundraising cash and facing two opposition parties still in rebuilding mode, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister is not ruling out a snap election call well in advance of the scheduled date of Oct. 6, 2020.

In a year-end interview with The Canadian Press, Pallister would not commit to stick to the date.

"Why would I give my opponent that advantage? I'll just say 2020 is what it's scheduled for," Pallister said. "I was in sports too long. I'm not giving away whatever minor advantages I may have. I'm not giving them away."

** 

Bernier, 55, who represents the federal riding of Beauce, south of Quebec City, slammed the door on the Conservative party on the eve of its August convention. The Tories, he said, were "too intellectually and morally corrupt to be reformed," and on Sept. 14 he launched the PPC.

"It's a challenge to do politics differently," Bernier told The Canadian Press during a recent interview in Montreal. "You saw the reactions of those pundits when I expressed a totally normal point of view," he said referring to his pipeline stance.

While he calls his policies normal, they are designed to upend the Canadian order. He proposes a drastic reduction in immigration to Canada, cutting levels by more than 40 per cent from the Liberal government's current target of 330,000 people in 2019. "I'm the only one who is saying, 'Let's take fewer immigrants,' " he said. "We want people to integrate, we don't want ghettos in Canada."

He calls his policies "smart populism," promising to shrink the size the federal government to such an extent that provinces would have no choice but to develop their own natural resources or find other ways of creating wealth. A PPC government would stop transfers to fund provincial health care.

Instead, it would give tax points to the provinces so they can collect their own health revenues. And it would not use federal dollars to pay for local infrastructure projects. Ontarians shouldn't be paying for provincial roads in New Brunswick, he says.

My God! It's like he's making sense! 

 

“Why are we still fighting against certain veterans’ groups in court? Because they are asking for more than we are able to give right now,” Trudeau said ... :

"The purchases Trudeau ordered bureaucrats to make to top-up the existing fleet at his lake house included: One 17 foot prospector canoe specifically in red, one flat water kayak and one river kayak, two paddleboards, a windsurfer, a sailboat, a pontoon boat, and a ski boat" https://t.co/SsIX4Zy4Ot

— Sheila Gunn Reid 🐀 (@SheilaGunnReid) December 28, 2018

 

Why, this sounds like a GoFundMe challenge:

Hey does everyone remember @Laurier profs Rambukkana and Pimlott, who brought me into a discliplinary meeting (which I recorded) where they accused me of transphobia & threatening trans ppl & breaking the law becuz I played a clip from public television?

They're suing me! pic.twitter.com/x0y4dAbULC

— Lindsay Shepherd (@NewWorldHominin) December 28, 2018

 

Furious that Lindsay Shepherd had the presence of mind to record their tyrannical absurdity, these cowards are swinging back.

Canada had the same culture of silence and incompetence when Sikh extremists blew up Air India 182. Why should anything change?:

Asked whether his force is any closer to understanding what may have motivated the man who killed two females and wounded 13 in a horrific mass shooting on the Danforth in July, at first Saunders completely ignored the question, indicating their frontline officers were on scene in three minutes and 30 seconds.

Then he claimed he doesn’t want to “get into the minutiae (of the investigation) right now” — that there are still “some more things” that need to be looked at before they come to any conclusions.

Faisal Hussain, 29, turned his gun on himself after the rampage, which occurred while citizens were enjoying coffee, a meal or a drink at outdoor cafes along the popular Greektown corridor on a hot Sunday night.

As the Sun’s Anthony Furey revealed in the days following the shooting, a Muslim activist who has apparently committed himself to “framing a new narrative of Muslims in Canada” issued a statement on behalf of the Hussain family shortly after the shooting — indicating the young man had “severe mental health challenges.”

In September, unsealed police documents showed that officers seized the shooter’s electronic devices searching for “any plans for the offences, contacts, substances that could be used to build bombs or any literature or documents depicting hate, extremism, terrorism or a similar belief or following.”

The police documents also indicate that Faisal’s only companions appeared to be his parents — and that in the hours before the shooting, his fraternal twin brother pleaded with him “to get his life together.”

No details were contained in the documents as to what the searches found.

Asked whether the media and the public will ever get an account of what was behind the shooting, Saunders responded:  “I’m sure there will be an opportunity to present whatever we can to the public but it’s not going to be today.”

Oh, that is what is causing the solar panel industry to flounder - red tape, not the fact that daylight lasts anywhere from five to eight hours in most places in Canada during the winter. Of course!:

Since the Ontario government cancelled more than 738 solar rooftop projects earlier this year, the solar industry has been urging the government to create a new free-market regulatory regime in the province.

All but the largest projects are on hold until the red tape that surrounds connecting to the grid in Ontario can be trimmed or eliminated, according to John Gorman, president of the Canadian Solar Industries Association.

Concerned about the cost of Ontario electricity, the Doug Ford government cancelled 759 solar and wind projects in June and ended the Green Energy Act — which was paying higher rates for renewable energy that was fed into the provincial grid — in December.

The previous Liberal government's feed-in tariff for renewable electricity offered contracts at a fixed price above market rates in an effort to encourage the building of renewable systems — starting at 80 cents per KW/h for the first to sign such contracts in 2009, with the amount offered gradually reduced to about 22 cents.

That's still higher than the rate actually paid by Ontario residents, which ranges from seven to 18 cents per KW/h. 

But Gorman argues solar has the potential to be the cheapest power on offer, if the process of connecting to the grid can be streamlined.

Trump can't get his wall built. The Koreans won't get their railroad built nor close off underground crenels. Canada can't get its oil out of the ground and to markets where it is needed. What a lazy year:

Can Canada build anything?

That’s the rather embarrassing question which lingers as these last days of 2018 trickle away. For the next decade at least, that question will be punctuated with an exclamation point in the form of the Peace Tower of Parliament, the Centre Block of which will lay vacant until literally God-knows-when. Certainly the government doesn’t know.

Speaking of Korea:

North Korea has sent a Christmas video message to South Korean churches, according to the Unification Ministry on Tuesday. 

The North's Korean Council of Religionists sent the 98-second video to the Commission on Faith and Order of Korean Churches, a combined organization of Catholic and Protestant churches. 

It was played at a Christmas concert in Seoul Anglican Cathedral last Friday.

Indeed:

North Korean state media have published images of Christmas worship in the isolated country in an apparent effort to rebut U.S. accusations that it suppresses religion. 

Ryomyong, a website run by the North's National Reconciliation Council, on Wednesday reported on Christmas worship at the Bongsu and Chilgol churches in Pyongyang. 

"Prayers were said... wishing that the hard-won mood of peace on the Korean Peninsula wouldn't be disturbed by Satanists' obstructive maneuvers," it claimed.

"The religious freedom is certainly legally guaranteed in our republic," another post said. "Why is the U.S. haughtily presumptuous as if it were 'an inquisitor?'"

 

Yes, about all of that:

North Korea once again tops the charts as the world’s worst persecutor of Christians, according to a recent report by Open Doors USA.

**

“In one incident he recounted a woman, in prison because she was a Christian, was kicked repeatedly and left for days because a prison guard overheard her praying for a child (Yes, children are in prison camps because the regime imprisons three generations of a family for the transgression of one member),” IRD reported.

“In prison factories, guards poured molten steel on Christians to kill them because believing in God instead of Kim Il-sung was the biggest crime in the eyes of the officials.”

** 

North Korea is in the midst of another purge of "impure elements," corrupt officials and military officers who resist his reform efforts ahead of elections to the Politburo and the 75th anniversary of the Workers Party. 

"The targets of the hunt are people whose relatives have been imprisoned for serious crimes and family members of defectors," a source said. 

The suspect families are apparently being driven out of Pyongyang into internal exile. But the party's organizational department is also investigating corruption by officials in Pyongyang and the provinces in a widespread probe. 

The purge was expected when the state media started a campaign against the evils of corruption recently. The Rodong Sinmun daily reported on Dec. 19 that corruption is tantamount to "treason."  

The source said, "Kim Jong-un ordered the Workers Party to strengthen the fight against crime at the end of the year."  

Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat, wrote on his blog, "It looks like Kim Jong-un has become very angry at the discovery of many instances of corruption among members of the Supreme Guard Command, which is responsible for his security." 

"It appears that Kim Jong-un is increasingly disappointed by the North Korean military." Thae said his view was supported by the fact that no military officers accompanied Kim when he visited the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun on Dec. 17 to mark the seventh anniversary of his father Kim Jong-il's death.

 

Kim Jong-Un has help persecuting people he doesn't like:

The government has been accused of illegally spying on executives at major state-run businesses whom they suspect of being too close to the Park Geun-hye administration and setting special investigators on their trail. 

Kim Tae-woo, a former member of the inspection team-turned-whistleblower, on Wednesday claimed that the government illegally collected information on the heads and auditors of 330 state-run companies and agencies to see "if they were appointed by the former administration and what their political affiliations are." 

Kim added that a blacklist was completed in the middle of last year, and the head of the presidential inspection team "ordered targeted checks saying many new positions have to be created" for supporters of President Moon Jae-in. 

**

The North Korean government does not know the identities of all citizens who have defected. Some may be considered "missing persons" or they may have even been registered as dead. 

Some 997 North Korean defectors have now been informed that their names, birth dates and addresses have been leaked but it is not clear what impact this will have. 

Analysts say there are some concerns that the leak could endanger the defectors' family members who remain in North Korea. 

Sokeel Park, South Korea Country Director for Liberty in North Korea, an international NGO that assists North Korean defectors, says this hack will make other defectors feel less safe living in South Korea. They may change their names, phone numbers and home addresses. 

Investigations by the unification ministry and the police are currently ongoing, with the ministry saying it would "do its best to prevent such an incident from happening again".

On 19 December, the ministry became aware of the leak after they found a malicious program installed on a desktop at a centre in North Gyeongsang province. 

The ministry said that no computers at other Hana (resettlement) centres across the country had been hacked.

One expert on North Korean cyber-warfare, Simon Choi, believes that this might not be the first time a Hana centre has been hacked.

"[There is a North Korean hacking] group [that] mainly targets [the] North Korean defector community... we are aware that [this group] tried to hack a Hana centre last year," he told the BBC.

However, he added that it was not yet clear if any North Korean groups were responsible for the latest attack.

 

Cultural enrichment and so forth:

 

German prosecutors have indicted a woman alleged to have belonged to the Islamic State group’s “morality police” in Iraq and to have let a small girl she and her husband held as a slave die of thirst.

The suspect, a 27-year-old German identified only as Jennifer W. in line with local privacy rules, was deported from Turkey to Germany in 2016. She was arrested in June and is now charged with murder and committing a war crime.

Federal prosecutors said Friday that the woman was recruited to a vice squad of the militant group’s self-styled morality police and patrolled parks in Fallujah and Mosul in 2015, ensuring women adhered to IS dress and behaviour codes.

The jihadists seized Mosul in June 2014 and proclaimed it their “capital” before they were driven out by Iraqi government forces in July 2017.

“Her task was to ensure that women comply with the behavioural and clothing regulations established by the terrorist organisation,” said the prosecutors in a  statement.

“For intimidation, the accused carried an assault rifle of the type Kalashnikov, a pistol and an explosives vest.”

In January 2016, months after the child’s death, W. visited the German embassy in Ankara to apply for new identity papers.

When she left the mission, she was arrested by Turkish security services and extradited several days later to Germany.

**

“She confessed her crime in front of them, how can they forgive her?” asked Mohammad Bota, the 50-year-old elder brother of Mohammad Idris. Villagers in Ittan Wali were open, hospitable and insisted their village was not backward. But they were also uncompromising when it came to the former neighbour who had lived in a small house with a blue painted gate.

All maintained that Asia Bibi had confessed to insulting the Prophet Mohammed during a quarrel with Muslim co-workers and her conviction should stand. If Pakistan’s harsh anti-blasphemy laws decree it, she should hang, they said.

“I would die in the name of my religion and if someone has committed blasphemy, then they are not forgiven,” said Shawkat Ali, a 62-year-old farmer. “If the supreme court has some faith in religion and if they are Muslims, they should execute her.”

Jizya - not just for Islamists anymore:

When Germans file their annual tax returns, religion matters a great deal. If you’re Catholic, tax authorities will likely collect an income tax surcharge of about 10 percent on behalf of your local church. The same applies to most Protestants.

The tax applies to almost all baptized Christians, and church representatives say that the state-enforced payments are crucial in financing cemeteries and community work.

So far, practising Muslims have been excluded from that rule, but some leading members of the German government’s coalition parties appear determined to change that. Despite criticism from some Muslim communities, they maintain that a state-collected tax for all Muslims would help to boost moderate interpretations of Islam and counter the appeal of wealthy foreign donors who promote more radical interpretations.

I doubt that part. It would, however, decrease welfare rolls.



The bloody victory at Ortona:

He remembers the Germans having filled the narrow streets of Ortona with enormous piles of rubble from demolished buildings. Prevented from moving forward in the clogged streets, the Canadians were in effect funnelled into the few unclogged streets – a trap – where they were mowed down with MG42 machine guns, capable of firing 1,200 bullets a minute, or blown up in booby-trapped buildings. To avoid the streets, the Canadians pioneered "mouse-holing,” which saw them blast holes through the walls of adjoining houses so they could flush out the Germans and keep moving through the town.

 
This might explain some things:

But a new study from Norway, which examines IQ scores from 730,000 men (standardized tests are part of military service there) disproves all these ideas, because it shows IQ dropping within the same families. Men born in 1991 score, on average, five points lower than men born in 1975. There must, in other words, be an environmental explanation, and the chronology throws up a clear suspect: the rise in screen-time. 

Kids brought up with Facebook and Instagram are more politically bigoted, not because they don’t hear alternative opinions, but because they don’t learn the concentration necessary to listen to opponents — a difficult and unnatural skill.

Mummering - Newfoundland's Halloween ... or something:

Nobody is quite sure when mummering — called mumming or janneying in some areas — began in Newfoundland and Labrador.

There is documentation of the practice dating back to the early 1800s, though, says Larry Dohey, director of programming and public engagement at The Rooms in St. John's.

"It's just like many of the customs that we had," Dohey said, explaining the tradition was brought by British and Irish settlers and then morphed and became part of the community over time.

Mummering traditionally runs from the Feast of St. Stephen on Dec. 26 to the Old Twelfth Day on Jan. 6. In the best-known variation of the tradition, people hide their identities by disguising their faces and bodies and modify their speech and behaviour while visiting neighbours' homes.

 

Billions of years of evolution:

I am laughing way too hard at this. pic.twitter.com/4PVP185KIS

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) December 21, 2018

Why can't families of capybaras get along?!:

On September 27, our resident capybara “Maruo” passed away. We wrote about this a little in the May edition of our zoo blog, but his relations with his older brother “Mochi” worsened to the point where they became locked in desperate battle with each other. After tending to their wounds we attempted to re-introduce them, but as it resulted in more injury we decided to keep them separate.
Right while we were debating whether we could let them go outside together once the fresh wounds had healed, it transpired that the capybaras had managed to break through the partition in between the enclosures and had fought again. We discovered Maruo dead that morning.”

How does it feel to have killed your own brother? ... He's devastated.

 

(Merci beaucoup and kamsahamnida)

Mid-Week Post

Your post-Christmas Day bloat ...



What a Christmas Day it has been!:

Pilgrims from around the world flocked to Bethlehem on Monday for what was believed to be the biblical West Bank city's largest Christmas celebrations in years.

Hundreds of locals and foreign visitors milled in Manger Square as bagpipe-playing Palestinian Scouts paraded past a giant Christmas tree. Crowds flooded the Church of the Nativity, venerated as the traditional site of Jesus's birth, and waited to descend into the ancient grotto.

Palestinian Tourism Minister Rula Maaya said all Bethlehem hotels were fully booked, and the city was preparing to host an "astounding" 10,000 tourists overnight.

"We haven't seen numbers like this in years," she said, adding that the 3 million visitors to Bethlehem this year exceeded last year's count by hundreds of thousands.

Also:

Christians remain the most persecuted religious group on the planet, and heart-breaking stories of violence and hostility occur on a regular basis, across the Middle East but also in places, such as Pakistan, China and even Europe.

In the Middle East, the birthplace of Christ and the biblical homeland for Christians, Islamist warlords, jihadist extremists and majority Muslim populations have engaged in violence, intimidation, ethnic cleansing and genocide for decades.

They’ve all but wiped out the region’s diverse Christian populations.

As a result, Christians from Egypt to Iran and Turkey to Yemen are fleeing and disappearing in record numbers. Following the first world war, it’s estimated that about one in five people in the Middle East were Christian. Today, it’s less than 4%.

In once tolerant and diverse countries, such as Turkey and Iran, Christian populations simply no longer exist. Iraq’s once vibrant Christian population fell from 1.4 million in 2003, to less than 200,000 today.

In Europe, home of the world’s most beautiful cathedrals and the birthplace to many of our Christmas traditions, Christians are suddenly feeling under attack.

In recent years, ISIS has targeted and waged deadly attacks at Europe’s iconic Christmas markets.

On Dec. 19, 2016, an ISIS agent deliberately drove a large truck through the market at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, killing 12 innocent people and injuring 56 more. He was a failed asylum seeker from Tunisia who worked with ISIS to wage his cowardly act of war.

On Dec. 11, 2018, an Islamist gunman opened fire at the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” He killed five people and left 12 more wounded.

The terrorist gunman was known to security officials in Europe, and yet, he was able to carry out his gruesome attack against unsuspected Christians in Europe’s capital.

And - this is the same country that refused to strip convicted terrorists of Canadian citizenship:

The Federal Court has overturned a Canadian visa officer’s decision to refuse permanent residence to a former Iraqi government official under Saddam Hussein’s regime, in a case that could have larger implications for how Canada decides whether to accept refugees with ties to dictatorships.

The homeless want more than what Ottawa can afford to take from them and hand out to illegal migrants and future Liberal voters blocks:

This year’s homeless count proves what we’ve been hearing for a year: That the influx of refugees and asylum seekers have taken a huge toll on Toronto’s shelter system.

The city’s recently released $250,000 Street Needs Assessment (SNA) — conducted the evening of April 26 and the fourth such survey since 2006 — showed that 2,618, or 40%, of the city-administered shelter spaces are occupied by refugees or asylum seekers.

In fact, minus the tremendous influx of refugees, the actual number of homeless using city shelter spaces increased by about 600 since the last survey in 2013.

This contrasts to the 2,400 shelter/motel beds, 600 24-hour respite site spaces and 102 shelter beds added in the past year or two.

The city report indicates that the 2,400 shelter/motel beds (at $105 per night) have been added “primarily to respond to increased demand from refugee/asylum seekers.”

According to a city statement released at the same time as the SNA report, only 11% of shelter spaces were occupied by refugees in 2016. That jumped to 25% at the end of 2017.

And the survey showed the top cause of homelessness in Toronto in 2018 is — not surprisingly — migration, followed by an inability to pay housing costs.

If one has followed Vivian Krause and her stellar work in uncovering the foreign influences in the anti-oil movement in Canada, one would know that this is not wholly Canadian:

“My main fear is that other nations will continue to produce at market price and Canada will be left behind,” said Duncan Au, chief executive of CWC Energy Services Corp. The well drilling company has cut about 70 employees, or nearly 10 per cent, since the beginning of 2018.

“This is a made-in-Canada crisis,” Au said.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is right to not meet with anyone illegally camped out at parliamentary buildings. Big Aboriginal doesn't want meetings but it does want upper hand$:

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says he's never met with anyone protesting outside the legislature and didn't see a need to make an exception when Indigenous protesters set up a camp this past fall.

Moe said cabinet members were more than capable of working through some of the protesters' concerns.

"I don't know if it would have resolved it in a quicker fashion or not. The fact of the matter is ... those individuals were engaged with on multiple occasions with multiple members of the cabinet," he said in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press.

Oh, sure:

A Canadian citizen is set to be tried on drug charges in the Chinese port city of Dalian, Chinese state media reported amid already-heightened tensions between Beijing and Ottawa.

Also - just remember that Meng is a real victim here:

Chinese police detained a well-known Marxist at a top university on Wednesday, a witness said, on the sensitive anniversary of the 125th birthday of the founder of modern China, Mao Zedong, whose legacy remains deeply contested.

Qiu Zhanxuan, head of the Peking University Marxist Society, was grabbed and forced into a black car outside the east gate of Peking University by a group of heavy-set men who identified themselves as police, a student told Reuters.

Kim Jong-Un is as likely to pay as Justin is likely to surrender his pension for being such a crappy prime minister:

A federal court judge on Monday ordered North Korea to pay the parents of Otto Warmbier more than $500 million, holding the country accountable for the “barbaric mistreatment” and death of the University of Virginia student.

The feast of Stephen:

And they stoned Stephen, invoking, and saying: Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

 And falling on his knees, he cried with a loud voice, saying: Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep in the Lord. And Saul was consenting to his death.